Today I spoke at a seminar for International Day of Persons with a Disability. The event was centred around the benefits system and the experiences of disabled people. When I was asked to be involved, I started pulling together my thoughts about the benefits system and resulting blog post began to turn into the poem above.

A few snippets from the notes I made when listening to other people at the seminar:

The process and system exacerbates conditions. It is ineffective. Inappropriate. And a waste of time and money. It does not get disabled people into work and may even move them further away from the world of work. It is unethical and inefficient.

Failures in the system are plunging people into debt, leaving them unable to buy food, making people reliant on friends and family and charities just so they can survive.

“It just smashes your self-worth. You’ve got to lend money, you’ve got to beg to borrow… you don’t know when you’re going to get money to pay it back”
– Disabled woman, quoted in an ESRC report

Disabled people are under siege from the very system that should be supporting us.